shelter
by frijae
Summary: Shion hasn't slept through the night in years, the bay windows of his bedroom flung as wide as they will ever go to let in summer air and cold rain, to let in lost things seeking shelter.


Shion hasn't slept through the night in years, the bay windows of his bedroom flung as wide as they will ever go to let in summer air and cold rain, to let in lost things seeking shelter. There had been a moth stuck to his curtain once and Shion had watched it struggle from under his covers for ten long minutes, finally getting up at four in the morning to let it go.

"Careful next time," he remembers murmuring as he gently helped one wing free, moving on to the other that had somehow inexplicably gotten caught in the coarse fibers of his curtains. Shion had smiled as he watched it leave after that, cupped hands unfolding to let it follow some dizzy, invisible path back into the early morning.

Sometimes, on particularly bad nights when the rainstorms are violent enough to make the glass panes in his windows rattle, Shion sets out the fluffiest towels he has onto the expanse of floor, laid into comfortable looking piles just inside of the balcony. Come morning, if he's really lucky, he'll find stray birds hiding in the warmth, sparrows startling sleepily back into the air whenever Shion draws closer.

It makes him feel a little better to know he has helped in some small way and Karan never questions him whenever he raids the linen closet for more towels than one person should need each time.

Karan thinks she understands, even if Shion himself might not.

Moths, birds, Shion has seen even the odd stray cat or two, but he finds it increasingly strange that he has never seen any mice. Don't mice need shelter, too? Or are they small enough to find places where the rain can't get them? Quick enough to always get home in time?

Maybe mice aren't that bothered by the rain?

Shion smooths down the towels he has for the night and watches the rainclouds start to gather just above the bare bones of newly risen buildings, finds himself realizing that he thinks about mice more often than he'd like to admit.

-

The nights that Shion does manage to sleep for more than two hours at a stretch, he dreams of waking up to Nezumi caught in his curtains, or maybe curled up in one of the towels he had set out.

"Help me," Nezumi will drawl as if it's the most natural thing this side of the world to get entangled in someone's curtains. Or perhaps "Join me," he'll say from where he's lounging on the pile of towels, wind from some dream-storm blowing strands free from the messy knot he's pulled his hair into.

Shion will cross the room in silent wonder then, hand coming to rest on Nezumi's arm or maybe his fingers will curl around the circumference of Nezmi's wrist, thumb against a pulse that's as real as breathing.

"You're back," dream-Shion says. "You're really back."

The Nezumis he dreams of always look the same, wearing mismatched clothes like a badge of honour from all the wanderings he's had and hair longer than before he left, smile still unchanged from the first time they ever met.

"Of course I'm back," Nezumi scoffs. There will be a rush of air then, the breath knocked out of Shion's chest when Nezumi tackles him to the floor or pulls him into the curtains as well and they end up onto the rain-splattered balcony. Either way, Nezumi will be a comfortable, just the right side of crushing warmth above him in the end and Shion, without any shadow of a doubt, Shion will always ask:

"What took you so long?"

And Dream-Nezumi? He just gets this sad look in his eyes each time, the one that makes him seem as if he has something he needs to say, but just can't.

"You know I-..." he starts and this is the part where Shion will wake up, curled around an empty space with the blankets fisted up to his chest and a tired little smile on his face.

Come mornings, Shion always wants to say that no, he doesn't know, but dream Nezumi and probably real-life Nezumi just aren't the kinds of people who'll give that any sort of consideration. "Find out for yourself, then," Shion imagines Nezumi telling him with this insufferable grin. "Aren't we all always learning?"

The idea makes him smile and Shion will somehow make it out from under his covers, a little more ready that morning to see what he has to help set free this time around.

(One day, Shion will wake up from that dream to the sound of Nezumi's voice drifting in over the first beats of wakefulness, an amused "Well it looks like someone is sleeping just fine without me around," that snaps Shion's eyes wide open.

And Nezumi will be there, perched on the balcony just like before, but this time with the sun to his back and not wind and rain and moonlight, brilliant sunshine threaded through his hair with a smile at the ready, a bagful of books at his feet and Nezumi will be there and Nezumi will be there and just...and just, Nezumi will be there.)

fin. 


End file.
